The band The Morning Benders released their second studio album, 'Big Echo', on Monday. | Courtesy of The Morning Benders
Two years removed from its first album, The Morning Benders release its second LP, Big Echo, today to the public.
As a relatively new band, the group has many influences, coming from severely different parts of the country.
The Morning Benders’ styles can be found in the cities they reside. The New York jazz attitude resonates through the passionate lyrics, while San Francisco delivers its hip, reverberating guitar melodies.
Although much could be said about the general effect of its music on the ear, The Morning Benders deliver one of the best albums of this young year.
Lead singer and front man Christopher Chu uses the Phil Spector wall of sound technique to describe the first track, “Excuses.” It’s an extremely accurate description from Chu, considering the impact of the first big chord leading into the beginning progression of a string ensemble.
A sound that cannot be described as less than beautiful, powerful and resonating follows the entrance of an old record player starting to spin. Strings fill the score with a melody fit for a ’50s tribute song. Chu goes on to lyrically explain the intricacies of a special relationship, one that he expresses extremely well through his pure tone of voice.
Following the trend of any relationship on the verge of collapse, excuses precede “Promises”. Diminished and choppy, the chord progression takes the listener into an appropriate mix of time signatures and jazzy rhythms.
The impact moments remain entirely intact, as the vibe of the album continues to impress. The Morning Benders show its musical genius well as the album only expands from there, relating to its college demographic on an entirely new level. Vampire Weekend was thought to have conquered this in the realm of indie music, but Morning Benders does it even better.
The band’s lyrics deserve the listener’s full attention, speaking of love and the lack thereof, the feelings of entering and leaving important relationships, and the emotion that naturally occurs within life transitions.
Musically, the mood changes only slightly, but shows a certain attention to detail that the band took in deciding the track order.
“Cold War” hits us with a surprisingly short, dissonant musical expression that resembles The Unicorns and is then countered suddenly by the next track, “Pleasure Sighs,” their most mellow track of the album. It’s obvious that The Beatles played a heavy role in influencing The Morning Benders, as it has with almost all new music (not that that’s a bad thing). As the fifth track plays, it continues to evoke passed times for the listener.
The remainder of the album goes flawlessly, displaying variety in the group’s ability to express themselves about some of the similar topics expressed at the front of the LP.
The Morning Benders’ release of Talking Through Tin Cans in 2008 was a great start to what appears to be a blossoming career for the young artists. With a style resembling Spoon and The Raconteurs, their first album led to some less surprising musical ideas.
It felt as if their first project was a way for the band as musicians to experiment with styles that are common to the indie scene. However, that tendency, shared by many indie artists, has never interfered with the ability to make quality music.
Big Echo breaks that habit completely for The Morning Benders and gives the group a true sense of identity as a future indie giant.
“The Morning Benders show its musical genius well as the album only expands from there, relating to its college demographic on an entirely new level” – exactly what I thought